(AFP) – Feb 2, 2008

NDJAMENA (AFP) — Thousands of civilians fled the Chadian capital on Monday, as rebels threatened a fresh offensive to oust President Idriss Deby after two days of heavy fighting saw them pull out of the city.

The government said its forces had pushed the rebels from Ndjamena, but rebel leaders insisted they had made a strategic withdrawal.

Dead bodies littered the city's streets and buildings were pockmarked with bullet holes after a weekend of fierce fighting, as Sudan denied claims by Deby that it was backing the rebellion.

General Mahamat Ali Abdallah, operational commander of government forces, told AFP the rebels had been "completely routed.... Time is going to show that they have been defeated."

But a military source later spoke of a rebel column, comprising around 30 pick-up trucks, stationed at a northern entrance to the city.

Chadian government forces had used tanks and helicopter gunships on Sunday to repel rebel fighters who had surrounded the presidential palace where Deby was holed up.

Rebel spokesman Abderaman Koulamallah, contacted Monday by satellite telephone, said the insurgency -- the most serious that Deby has faced since coming to power in 1990 in this central African state -- was far from over.

"We have pulled out of the city and we are waiting for the civilian population to be evacuated," Koulamallah told AFP, adding that the rebels were surrounding the capital that is home to an estimated 700,000 people.

"We opted to leave the city, but we certainly will go back on the offensive," he said. "We're asking the civilian population of Ndjamena to leave immediately because their safety cannot be assured."

In Geneva, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said it had been told by local officials on the Chadian border that people were fleeing Ndjamena "by the thousands" into neighbouring Cameroon.

"We're expecting a lot more," UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond said.

A French armed forces spokesman said 839 foreigners had been evacuated from the Chadian capital to neighbouring Gabon since Saturday, while almost 300 more were still at Ndjamena airport and a nearby French military base.

A commercial aircraft carrying 363 people including 205 French nationals landed in Paris Monday morning from the Gabonese capital Libreville.

France, the former colonial power, has 1,450 troops based in Chad and armed forces spokesman Major Christophe Prazuck said there had been a "brief and limited contact" between French troops and the rebels on Saturday.

No death toll has been given for the weekend fighting, but many bodies were seen in the streets, some covered in flies or plastic shrouds. The aid group Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF - Doctors Without Borders) said "hundreds" of civilians had been wounded.

In fighting Sunday, the main Ndjamena market was looted and torched after it was hit by a missile, while the national radio station was ransacked.

In Khartoum, the Sudanese government denied claims by Deby's regime that it was supporting the rebels, who had crossed the width of Chad from rear bases in Sudan's remote and strife-torn Darfur region.

"What's happening in Chad is an internal matter and Sudan has nothing to do with it," Sudan armed forces spokesman Othman Mohammed al-Agbash said, adding that claims of Sudanese warplanes supporting the rebels were "groundless."

In New York, the UN Security Council was to resume emergency talks Monday on a declaration to condemn the rebel assault.

And in Brussels, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said the European Union would go ahead with its peacekeeping mission to Chad, though troop deployment has been halted by the ongoing unrest.

"Our wish is to maintain the operation," Solana said.

The EU force has been tasked with protecting refugees from Darfur, as well as Chadians and people of the neighbouring Central African Republic displaced by internal conflict.

Force commanders want the mission to be initially ready in March and fully up and running in May, with a total of some 3,700 European troops drawn from 14 nations, and France providing more than 2,000 personnel.

The World Food Programme said the current unrest risked disrupting food aid to more than 400,000 Sudanese refugees and displaced Chadians.

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